• DOI:10.1017/S0364009406000158
• Corpus ID: 162547428

So Easily Assimilated: The New Immigrant Chic

@article{Rovner2006SoEA,
  title={So Easily Assimilated: The New Immigrant Chic},
  author={Adam Rovner},
  journal={AJS Review},
  year={2006},
  volume={30},
  pages={313 - 324}
}

• Adam Rovner
• Published 27 October 2006
• Art
• AJS Review

Last year, a friend drew my attention to the lyrics of a famous song in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, the composer’s first attempt in 1956 to write the “Great American Opera.” The song, “I Am Easily Assimilated,” remains one of the best-loved musical numbers from the play and includes the following lines: My father came from Rovno Gubernya.But now I’m here, I’m dancing a tango….My father spoke a High Middle Polish.In one half-hour I’m talking in Spanish:Por favor! Toreador!I am easily assimilated.I am so easily assimilated. The irreverent lyrics are often credited to Bernstein himself and refer to the biography of his father, Sam, who immigrated to America from the province (gubernya) of Rovno. This Jewish tango exhibits a musical pastiche of Hispanic and Klezmer traditions in its instrumentation and displays a manic shift from Russian to English to Spanish that mirrors the composer’s playful notation that it be played “Moderato Hassidicamente.” The song is both a parody of and a monument to the assimilatory spirit. My friend, however, thought I would be interested in the song because my last name is Rovner; he expected that I would want to track down Bernstein’s reference to the area, Rovno, that lent my family its patronymic.